We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
SSA Inspector General : I See Dead People (and Prisoners)
I have a sixth sense about these things: the federal government passing a $787B stimulus bill scarcely a month into Obama's Presidency. Who would ever guess that that was a scandal waiting to happen? I wonder if some conservative blogger warned "haste makes waste"...
The Social Security Administration IG determined over $18M in $250 checks went to some 79,000 dead people (about half of which was eventually returned), and another $4M went to over 17,000 prison inmates.
The IG notes even though dead people were ineligible for the stimulus checks, the Democrats (maybe because it wasn't their money?) failed to authorize the means to recover checks wrongly mailed to dead people. As for prisoners, they were eligible for a check they received social security during any eligibility month preceding their incarceration...
Say it ain't so, Joe (Biden)....
The inspector general's report said that if similar payments are authorized in the future, prison inmates should be ineligible and the government should be able to recover payments made to dead people.You think? I have no doubt the dead people and prisoners will vote Democratic this fall....
A Response to Plouffe: Meet the Press (Sept 5)
I'm tired of pretentious political spin; I don't mind legitimate points of view, e.g., on points of Keynesian economics, but I disdain intellectually dishonest grandstanding. I realize the original broadcast was a month ago, but the Democrats have been repeating the same straw men talking points for months; I prefer a more direct response than most of the GOP legislators
The Republican Party that wants to gain back control, their policies contributed to the worst economic crisis this country's seen since the Great Depression. If they had their way, we might have headed to a depression, opposing the Recovery Act.What policies are you talking about? "Rolling the dice" with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the GSE's which, using the implicit guarantee of the federal government and the American taxpayer, grew to dominate the secondary market and bought many questionable mortgage notes? Wall Street banks which were already heavily (and ineffectually) regulated and which favored Democrats in political contributions? The Democratic legislation which sought to confound sound lending policies with politically oriented goals (e.g., putting lower-income/low-savings households into houses)?
"Headed to a depression, opposing the [stimulus]"? Economists have concluded the recession ended 4 months into the Obama Presidency. We have a $14.5T economy, the $787B spanned multiple years, and only a tiny fraction was spent by the end of the recession. The temporary tax cuts were more than offset by increased savings by Americans. The Republicans want to provide more stability for business decision making.
The Republican experiment's a very recent one--fiscal irresponsibility, really, an unprecedented assault on the middle-class and small businesses.The Bush Administration inherited a stock market collapse and experienced 9/11 and financial scandals. Despite that, the Bush tax cuts eventually led to 52 straight months of job growth and the highest federal receipts ever.
You want to talk about fiscal responsibility? During the 12 years that the Republicans were in control of the House, a third of the time they ran a SURPLUS. A Democratic-controlled House has not balanced the budget in decades; it's a matter of public record. By the end of Obama's first term, he will have accumulated more than the entire debt accumulated during Bush's two terms. An "assault" on the middle class and small business? Three-quarters of the Bush tax cuts went to the lower/middle-class. Ask small business what they think about federal attempts to mandate health insurance coverage at their expense and the Democrats' class warfare on increasing job creator tax rates and investment taxes.
We're on the right path here: economic policies aimed squarely at the middle class and small businesses; creating a new energy sector; the healthcare law which, over time, I think is going to play a big impact on economic growth."Creating a new energy sector?" What hubris! The federal government knows how to spend money, but news to Plouffe: the federal government has been "investing" in alternative energy for decades and relevant companies only survive because of lucrative federal subsidies, and it is not the responsibility or the competence of the federal government to pick sector winners or losers. The health care law will strain an already inflationary sector, with costs not coming under megalomaniac delusions of controlling things like an aging population, and in fact the market share of health care relative to GDP is widely expecting to rise from today 17% to maybe 25% over the next several years.
They drove us into the ditch. And if we give the keys back to the people who did this, it would be like giving Herbert Hoover the keys in the mid-1930s.Roosevelt's Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., [said] in 1939, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work . . . and we have an enormous debt to boot." Enough with the driving metaphor, Plouffe! Let's just suppose, for a second, that the housing bubble didn't have its origins during the early Clinton Administration, Democratic housing preferential policies didn't have an effect and that Fed Reserve monetary policy didn't contribute to the bubble: the fact is that job growth over the past several months at best barely addresses new entrants to the job market--never mind putting a dent into the 15M un- or underemployed.
If Bush was driving the car and it landed in the ditch (no matter if he just hit an ice patch or swerved to miss one of those beloved caribou from the Artic National Wildlife Preserve), the fact is that Obama knew the car was in a ditch when he signed on, and two years later, he still hasn't figured out how to get the car out of the ditch. I don't want to hear about how deep the ditch is, or how he wasn't responsible for the car being in the ditch. We don't expect excuses from competent leaders; we expect solutions.
My Choice for Top Political Ad
Political Humor
"The Senate has decided to limit the volume of TV commercials. Who says Congress doesn't get anything done?" –David Letterman
[Not me, Dave; after all, didn't they just pass a resolution of a day in honor of accordion players?....Notice they didn't tone down C-SPAN... The Democrats wanted an automatic mute for appearances by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others, but the GOP threatened a filibuster, reading every Limbaugh broadcast into the Congressional Record.]
An original:
Great moments in American political history:
- Richard Nixon: "I am not a crook."
- Christine O'Donnell: "I am not a witch"
- 2010 Democratic incumbent: "I am not {Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid}."
Musical Interlude: The "British Invasion" of the 1960s Series
The Kinks, "You Really Got Me"
